


take a bow (for the bad decisions we made)

by ohallows



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Discussion of Morality, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-12 01:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19218634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: But.Zolf knows what it’s like to have a brother, to have a family, that you don’t want to disappoint. To... lose a brother. To lose one of the people you care about most in the world. And... given the choice between protecting Feryn, who always believed in him even when Zolf was spouting crazy theories about the meritocracy and about living his life on the sea with no worries, and having him thrown in jail for... nearly anything? He would save his brother every single time. Even if it’s not fair to everyone else.





	take a bow (for the bad decisions we made)

**Author's Note:**

> i’m dedicating this to the rqdbfc y’all Inspire me and also i’ve only had you all for like a day and if anything happened to y’all i would kill everyone in this room and then myself (soz it ends abruptly idk how to end... anything)
> 
> me, shooting up in bed at 2am: WHAT IF ZOLF HAD BEEN THERE FOR HAMIDS BIG CONFESSION 
> 
> me, deciding to write this: HOW DO ZOLF MORALITY 
> 
>  
> 
> i don’t know what this is beyond exorcising my demons and exploring zolf bc hot damn do i want his take on this. if someone already did this.... sorry. any variation to canon take as artistic license bc honestly i haven’t relistened to the ep yet this concept just possessed my soul (upon a relisten i realized that the conversation abt what happened at cambridge happened the next day but let’s pretend... it didn’t and hamid blurted it out. idk). i also do not know if this is in character or not. this is just. yea. mr meredith i respect your role playing decisions but i miss zolf so much

 

No one is speaking to each other. Well, no one but Sasha and Zolf, and even then it’s less formally speaking and more sitting alone together on the roof of Hamid’s parents estate in a comfortable silence only broken by soft curse words and a wry chuckle. The stars blink far above them as Zolf lets himself lie back and run a hand down the side of his face. 

Azu and Grizzop went to their rooms almost immediately after the... he wants to call it a discussion, but usually a discussion doesn’t involve that many raised voices, tears, or threats, so he might just have to give in and call it an argument. Hamid followed suit after shooting a tearful glance at Zolf and Sasha, glamour falling from around his face as his mascara ran in a way that wasn’t attractive or intentional, as though he was too tired to keep up the prestidigitation, as though he wasn’t able to keep putting the front up. And then he was gone, sliding back into the house on silent footfalls, arms wrapped around himself as he disappeared around the corner. Leaving Zolf and Sasha standing there, awkwardly, until Sasha took a step forward, said, “Wanna come?” and pointed up to the roof.

Zolf wasn’t going to say no to the easy out, and everyone else seemed like they needed a minute to cool off.

He’d barely contributed to the conversation,anyway, barely able to get a word in edgewise around Grizzop and Hamid arguing.

Sasha started climbing and Zolf followed. She was much more graceful about it, always had been, and reached down to help him get the last five feet up when she was settled and bracing against a beam. He gave her a nod of thanks and she just smiled, barely there, and slouched down with her feet dangling off of the edge.

And that’s where they’ve been for at least a couple of hours now, watching the sun set in near silence, avoiding talking about what just happened.

Sasha doesn’t seem to have any need to move like Zolf does. He hasn’t been on the water in too long - not counting Dover, which was nothing like the ships he’s traveled the world in - but he still feels unsettled by how... well, settled the land feels. There’s no steady rocking, no gentle dip back and forth that Zolf had become accustomed to during his time in the navy and as a pirate.

Sometimes, he just has to move. And Sasha might be comfortable sleeping on the roof and chatting with gargoyles, but Zolf eyes the roof with no small amount of distaste; there’s a bed in a room probably right below him that’s a thousand times more soft, and he’s done his time sleeping in barracks.

He says a quiet goodbye to Sasha, who nods back to him with an equally soft, “see you, boss,” and starts to climb down the building. It’s harder than getting up, but he makes do, and heads into the path, following the curved, ornate hallways to his room.

“Zolf? Is that you?” he hears Hamid call from the slightly open doorway to his left; he can’t pretend like he can’t hear it, he already stopped walking, and there’s a note in Hamid’s voice that suggests he’s been crying, which isn’t that surprising considering it’s _Hamid_ but Zolf still doesn’t want to let him sit there self-combusting like Zolf would be. So he pushes open the door a little bit more and steps inside.

“Alright, Hamid?”

The light is off and the shutters are pulled tightly shut, not letting in any of the moonlight.

“Do you agree with them? About m- about Saleh?” Hamid’s voice is silent in the dark room; he can’t see Zolf, but Zolf can see his outline perfectly, can see Hamid curled up in the big bed, arms wrapped around his knees as he stares blankly into the wall across. He’s shaking slightly, and Zolf wants to reach out and wrap an arm around him, wants to tell Hamid that it’ll all work out and that everyone just needs time to let it sit, but he’s never been good with words at the best of times and what he wants to say dies in his throat.

He also knows what Hamid is speaking around, knows that no one could change his mind about what he did for Saleh, what he did for his family, knows that Hamid would do the same thing over again and choose his family. Zolf’s pretty certain that even though Hamid cares about what they think about that, Hamid cares more about what they think of him, now that they know what he did.

But see, even though he knows this, he doesn’t know how he feels about it.

Grizzop is... he’s right, in a way. Saleh had more chances than most people get to be saved and he didn’t take them, and now his father is taking the fall for him once more. It’s privileged, and wrong, but. But.

Zolf knows what it’s like to have a brother, to have a family, that you don’t want to disappoint. To... lose a brother. To lose one of the people you care about most in the world. And... given the choice between protecting Feryn, who always believed in him even when Zolf was spouting crazy theories about the meritocracy and about living his life on the sea with no worries, and having him thrown in jail for... nearly anything? He would save his brother every single time. Even if it’s not fair to everyone else.

Maybe it’s not the right decision. Maybe it is selfish. Zolf never claimed to be anything else.

The point of it all is that he understands why Hamid would want to protect his brother. Understands that his own family wouldn’t even have a chance to do the same if it had been Feryn, if it had been Zolf, instead of Saleh. Understands Azu’s stance, understands Grizzop’s frustration and anger.

Hamid’s voice pulls him out of his own head.

“You never answered my question,” Hamid murmurs, and there’s an undercurrent of fear in his voice, mixed with desperation. And about then is when Zolf realizes he’s just been standing there for about five minutes, silently sorting through his own thoughts.

Luckily, Hamid is used to that, after a year of adventuring with both Zolf and Sasha. Still, Zolf... doesn’t know.

“It’s not that simple, Hamid,” Zolf starts, and Hamid tenses.

“No, Hamid, I -“ he blows out a breath, trying to make his words fit together in the right way. “I know why you did it, I - I had a brother too, Amelia mentioned him on the airship?” He waits for Hamid’s small nod before he continues. “He - I would have done anything for him too. I probably would have done the same.”

Hamid sniffles a little bit, swiping a finger under his eyes as his shoulders start to relax. “You would?”

Zolf... hesitates, before saying, “Yeah, I reckon I would. But, Hamid. That doesn’t - me saying I would do something doesn’t make it okay. It doesn’t make it right.”

It doesn’t. Zolf gets that. He thinks Hamid does too, but he might just need to hear it.

“Yes, I... that makes sense. I suppose I just... I never saw it that way. My father was always protecting us - well, Saleh and the twins more than my sisters and myself,” Hamid says. “It was a fact of life, I didn’t - I never had to apply any sort of morality to it. I know that sounds silly, but that’s just how it was.”

Zolf can’t empathize with that, because his home life consisted of being told over and over again that his future was in the mine, when every bone in his body was aching to be on the sea. Most people don’t have that kind of family, or the chance to be able to do that.

He’s not going to absolve Hamid of that. That has to be a conclusion he reaches on his own.

They wait there in silence for a moment as Zolf leans back against the bed, arms folded across his chest.

Hamid is the first to break the silence.

“And what about the thing with - with Gideon and Liliana?” Hamid asks, voice soft. There’s more trepidation in his voice now, more worry about how Zolf is going to react.

Zolf wishes he could make Hamid believe that he doesn’t have to be. Worried, that is. Tense.

He... he knows Hamid better than Azu and Grizzop, or he wants to think he does, and he knows that Hamid has been constantly trying to help for the entire time that Zolf has known him, has been trying to be better.

The issue is, Poseidon... Poseidon is all about justice, yeah? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life... the dedicated life of a servant for boons and healing powers.

And Zolf might be a cleric but he isn’t a saint. He’s killed enough people in his own time - pirates usually do - and not only the people who deserved it. He has enough to answer for himself.

... Zolf’s always been a bit of a shit cleric of Poseidon anyway. Maybe he doesn’t really know what Poseidon wants. His trial back in Dover with the Navigator showed that. He’d thrown himself and his friends to the waves when Poseidon had asked, and he’d been found to be worthy enough to be saved, or at least not worthy enough to be worth the trouble of killing.

But that’s not the point - Hamid is the point right now, not Zolf’s faith to his god, he can have yet another panic attack later.

It’s - it’s not okay, but everything isn’t broken either, not the way that it might well be between Grizzop and Hamid. (Azu has too big of a heart, Zolf thinks, for something like this to drive a permanent wedge between them. Grizzop is more bitter, more hardened, and he’s not half as willing to forgive as Azu is, and Zolf really doesn’t have the right to psychoanalyze someone else but he can recognize lasting trauma when he sees it. And Sasha is... she’s Sasha, she more than anyone else knows how people can use you and manipulate you and force you to do things you never knew you would be capable of. Zolf gets that too.)

“It’s in the past, Hamid,” Zolf says, and it’s not unkind, he’s done enough of that. “We’ve all done things we regret, we’ve all - we’ve all made mistakes. You know I’ve made my fair share. It’s not - if you always think about the what-if’s, if you always wonder how you could have made better decisions, you’ll never be able to move forward.” Zolf is... intimately familiar with that particular struggle, and he doesn’t envy Hamid for having had experienced a similar situation.

Zolf was paralyzed back in Dover, back in Paris, back on the airship, feeling out of control and lost and forsaken and as though every single move he’d made had been wrong. He’s no stranger to feeling like you’re spiraling. And when it comes to things like justice, and morality... Zolf’s come a long way from wanting to drown everyone in a bucket (although that honor is still in the back of his mind every time he sees Wilde) but he sees the nuance now, more than he used to. And it took going through hell to get there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Zolf asks, and isn’t that surprised when Hamid just turns an incredulous look in his general direction. It’s not a fair question to ask, he knows it’s not, not with everything he kept back, hell, they don’t even know about Feryn, about what happened with his ship. But still, they’ve all been through hell together, and yes he’s saying ‘me’ but what he really means is ‘me and Sasha’ because they’ve all been through hell and back together.

“That’s not really fair,” Hamid says, hint of a sulk in his voice. “But I suppose it was just... I didn’t know how you’d react, any of you, and I didn’t want to have any of you look at me differently.”

“Yeah, that. That makes sense. But, Hamid, we - you can’t let other people dictate what you do.”

He can see tears starting to make tracks down Hamid’s face again, even as he tries to wipe them away, and reaches out awkwardly to pat Hamid on the shoulder. Hamid shoots him a grateful smile, but there’s a deep well of misery sitting under the facade.

“I’m not the one who can absolve you of everything, Hamid,” Zolf says, letting his hand rest on his shoulder. “Only you can do that. Not me, not Grizzop, not Sasha, not Azu, not anyone. You have to be able to forgive yourself - or, at least, you have to be able to move on from it, stop letting it consume you. It happened. We can’t change the past, we can just move on and keep... doing better.”

Hamid nods, and there are still tears pouring down his face, but nothing’s really new there, Zolf’s pretty used to Hamid’s tears by this point. But the misery seems to have at least receded a bit, so he’ll take it as a win. He rises from the bed and Hamid wipes ineffectually at his eyes, sniffling a bit as Zolf heads for the door.

It’s late, after all, and it’s been a long day, and Zolf is already thinking about how tense everyone is going to be tomorrow, and it’s already starting to give him a headache.

“Zolf?” Hamid calls after him, and he pauses in the doorway, turning back.

“Uh, yeah?” he responds.

“I just -“ Hamid exhales, a puff of tension and anxiety being released. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, uh - no problem, Hamid,” Zolf says, gently shutting the door behind him.

He stands in the hallway for a minute, waiting, until he pushes away from the door and heads down the hallway, intent on getting at least a few hours of sleep.


End file.
